Chapter 1.3

His first impression of Dublin, the capital of Ireland, was a mess. Dan sensed an intense gloom from the moment he reached the immigration desk. The expression of the officer checking his passport was severity itself.

The Dublin weather blowing into the airport was utterly dreary. Gloomy, severe, dreary feelings poured down over his head.

Two and a half months.

He told himself he just had to make the money and run. But when he passed through the checkpoint and spotted the muscular black man and white man who had come to pick him up, he felt the urge to turn right around and go back to New York.

A strange anxiety shook him, enough to make him feel like his instincts were telling him to go to Korea.

“Dan.”

Brian Paul was nowhere to be seen, and the two muscular men who had worked so hard at creating a subduing atmosphere beside him greeted Dan warmly. Dan pulled his suitcase and stood before them.

The one who had called his name was the white man, smaller in frame but packing more muscle. He flushed pink in the cheeks and said:

“Dan, right?”

“Yes, good to see you again. But…”

Dan stood at a slant with the hand not holding his suitcase shoved into his jeans pocket, glancing behind the two muscular men. At his look the two of them turned to check behind themselves. Dan just stared blankly at their guileless reaction.

“Oh! I’m Mul, this is Shane.”

Mul, who was about the same height as Dan but appeared to have about ten times the muscle, flushed pink in the cheeks again as he spoke. Dan was curious about Brian Paul but knowing their names wasn’t a bad idea either, so he nodded.

Shane loosened his dark cheeks, which had been set hard, and said to Dan:

“Let’s go.”

He had no other option so Dan followed them out. Shane was a bodyguard and driver, he said. At the word bodyguard for the big guy who had flinched at his toy gun, Dan nearly burst out laughing and barely managed to turn it into a ‘ahem!’ of a cough instead. The corners of his lips twitched but neither of them seemed to notice.

Mul, who had appeared in a few photos alongside Chris Paul that Dan had seen a handful of times, was a trainer as expected. Unlike Shane, who spoke almost not at all, Mul flushed pink and cheerfully explained life in Dublin to Dan.

Mul the trainer lived next door to Chris Paul and commuted in the mornings and out in the evenings, he said. The physiotherapist visited regularly twice a week, and Shane was staying at a bed and breakfast near his house, he said.

When a physiotherapist was suddenly needed, Shane would bring one, he also said. Using the hill as a landmark: above it was Chris Paul’s house, below it the gardener’s house, next to it Mul’s house, and next to and below Mul’s house the stable manager’s house and Chris Paul’s property met, he said.

“Here, take this, Dan.”

Mul finished his rough explanation and pulled an envelope from a clear document box and handed it to Dan. Inside the envelope were documents that appeared to have been prepared by Brian Paul, covering payment procedures, emergency contacts, and safety guidelines.

Mul and Shane glanced over at Dan as he tucked the heavy envelope into his suitcase. Their curious looks landed on the light clothing and few sets of tracksuit Dan had packed. Their expressions were very strange.

Dan belatedly noticed what Mul and Shane were wearing. Mul had on clothes with a deep blue base, so deep it looked almost black at a glance, with gold lines running through it. Shane was in white with, if you looked closely, very dark navy lines.

Both Mul’s clothes and Shane’s had something to do with Chris Paul, since what they were wearing was closely tied to the team colours of Stewart, the team Chris Paul belonged to.

What Mul had on was the team jacket the crew wore on track, and Shane was in a team shirt. Given Mul and Shane’s muscle and build it would have been hard to find the right size, but whether they had them made to order or otherwise, they were dressed in their employer’s team colours.

An elegant deep blue-black base with a bright gold pattern. The colour combination Dan cursed without end. He didn’t consider himself a proper Ferrari fan, but when it came to disliking Chris Paul and his team he felt he met the criteria amply.

That deep blue-black with gold line decoration was involved in all manner of incidents and accidents on track. The fact that those incidents and accidents always ended with that goddamn race car crossing the finish line first made the aversion all the stronger.

“What’s the matter?”

Dan asked, closing his suitcase. Shane looked ahead and focused on driving, and Mul gave an awkward smile. Soon the Cadillac came to a stop before a massive iron gate.

“Here we are.”

Mul said, stepping out of the passenger seat. He helped Dan lift his suitcase out. Shane, who had driven the whole way without a word, got out of the driver’s seat too. He retrieved a large shopping bag from the trunk.

Dan took the large shopping bag from Shane, whose dark cheeks were set firm. Shane abruptly patted Dan on the shoulder. Mul patted the other shoulder and said:

“Today is a rest day with no training. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Chris will probably be in the room at the centre of the second floor or at the end of the hallway. He knows the manager is coming so he might be on the first floor. Here, take this. Each key has a number on it and the explanation for the numbers will be in the documents you received earlier. The smallest key opens that door next to the front gate, and the card key is for the front entrance. Good luck.”

Dan accepted what he wasn’t sure was a farewell or a word of comfort and gathered up the key ring. The two of them looked at his face and each expressed their gloom in their own way, then looked at the suitcase in his hand and sighed in identical fashion before quietly stepping back. It was the first time the words ‘good luck,’ so commonly heard, had felt so real.

Dan watched Mul and Shane turn and go.

Shane offered to drop Mul off at Mul’s house, the house next door. Mul took him up on it without hesitation and climbed into the passenger seat.

The Cadillac carrying Shane and Mul shrank to the size of a coin and then stopped. Only after watching Mul, now matchstick-small, step out in front of Mul’s house, which looked no bigger than a card, did Dan feel the weight of the key ring in his hand.

“Better go in.”

Dan muttered to himself. Judging by the looks those two had given him, he might really need that luck.

He walked to the small door beside the massive front gate and found the key. The door was less than a quarter the size of the gate but looked to be about three times the size of the entrance to the security company that had coldly fired him.

Dan opened the small door and stepped inside, murmuring without realising it.

“Good luck.”

He closed the dignified side door and turned around to see the mansion’s front entrance waiting for him far in the distance. It looked to be roughly five or six hundred metres from the gate to the entrance. Taking stock of the distance, a laugh like a sigh escaped him.

“What kind of house is this?”

He was going to need a great deal of luck. With a sigh he set off dragging his suitcase toward the entrance. He walked as far as he had walked getting from his house to the airport and all the way here before he finally arrived at the front door.

He held the card key to the panel on the wall beside the entrance and a metallic sound rang out as the door opened. The notes he had briefly seen earlier said the front door opened by card key would close again quickly.

Better get in before it closes. Dan wedged his hand in the open gap of the door and pushed his suitcase through the narrow space.

He felt worn out just from the walk between the gate and the entrance. He let out a long breath and stepped inside.

The next moment Dan held his breath. He was momentarily overwhelmed by a ceiling so high the word towering barely covered it and a floor space so vast the word expansive fell short.

Right after, a practical cry rooted in the survival instinct surfaced. Housekeepers! A great many housekeepers! Extraordinarily capable housekeepers!

He instinctively and desperately yearned for the housekeepers Brian Paul had regrettably said were currently unavailable. He wanted to grab Brian by the collar right then and demand to know if he was seriously expected to clean a house this size.

On top of that there was no cook either. It came back to him that he would have to do the cooking himself according to the diet plan the nutritionist had drawn up. The terror of whether he would even be able to find the kitchen in this enormous house pressed in on him.

When it occurred to him that on top of cleaning and cooking he would have to follow his employer around doing manager work whenever the man went out, he started thinking it might be better to turn around and leave.

Just as Dan was about to make his decision.

“Who’s there?”

A low but not rough, gentle voice asked languidly.

“Me.”

Dan turned toward the source of the sound. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] A row of sofas stood before a large window that showed the gloomy sky in full. On a couch the size of a bed set beside the long sofa lay a man with long, firm limbs stretched out.

It was Chris Paul.

Chris saw Dan and smiled without a sound. Dan’s mood began to sink sharply at the sight of what was clearly a derisive smile. Chris murmured toward Dan, who had appeared dragging a suitcase.

“Brian’s a money-grubber but his knack for getting things done is exceptional.”

The Chris who had spoken to Dan quietly and politely at the hotel was, in his own home, talking on and off in a sly, offhand tone with the occasional scoff. Chris, who had been turning his head toward where Dan stood, suddenly frowned. Dan was internally repeating to himself that it wasn’t too late and he should make his decision and turn back, when Chris got up from the couch.

“Tifosi.”

That beautiful face said, pulling up one corner of its lips.

Tifosi.

Dan knew Tifosi was being used to address him. The spelling was Tifosi, the plural of Tifoso, and the meaning was fan.

But within F1, Tifosi was a noun referring specifically to Ferrari fans. Strictly speaking it should be Ferrari Tifosi, but at some point fans of Ferrari had simply become ‘Tifosi.’

“Tifosi.”

Chris said it again. Chris Paul’s Tifosi was the Tifosi of Ferrari’s Tifosi.

Dan considered explaining that he wasn’t such a passionate Ferrari fan and might not quite qualify as a Tifosi, but held his tongue. He felt that if he spoke he would cause trouble. Dan stood still and held his gaze, and Chris said to him:

“Take it off.”

Chris Paul, now his employer, was throwing careless words around. Dan asked carefully, in the manner of an employee.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said take it off.”

Chris Paul the employer, with his long legs, approached the hesitating employee Kim Dan. Chris snatched the large shopping bag out of Dan’s hand. Dan, startled by how quickly Chris had come right up in front of him, gripped the suitcase handle remaining in his hand tightly.

Chris looked through the shopping bag and said:

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“You mean me… take, take things off?”

“Yeah.”

Chris said to Dan, who was in need of luck, without hesitation. Dan considered lecturing him about whether he thought he had come here to do that sort of thing, then dropped it. The age gap wasn’t enough to make a lecture look anything other than ridiculous.

‘I know very well you’re obsessed with that sort of thing, you crazy bastard!’

He also considered saying that, then following it with a whack from the suitcase and making a run for it. He figured the probability of retaliation after the insult was 99.9 percent, and the probability of being stopped before the suitcase could connect was likewise 99.9 percent.

The mildest response was the only reasonable one. Just as he was debating whether to ask if the man knew he had come as his manager, the improper demand rang out again.

“Take it off.”

Chris looked through the contents of the shopping bag with a satisfied expression.

“…”

Dan fumbled a little.

“Hurry up.”

The urging words were tossed at his hesitating face. What had he just been told to do. Dan, confused and watching for cues, had just decided he needed to say ‘I came here as a manager,’ when Chris, seeing he still hadn’t undressed, set his expression and said:

“Manager.”

“Yes?”

“I said take it off.”